A new report finds members of Congress and their aides took at least 23-thousand trips between 2000 and 2005, valued at nearly 50-million-dollars…all paid for by corporations, trade groups and non-profit organizations.

The Washington-based Center for Public Integrity prepared Monday’s report on congressional travel perks.

Jim Morris – who led the study – says many of the travel request forms – required by Congress to help account for these free trips –lacked key information.

For instance, he says Republican Sarasota Congresswoman Katherine Harris attended an event in Palm Beach in 2003, but didn’t list who was paying for the trip…at least until his group pointed out her error.


“The bottom line is she didn’t put the sponsor on the form and it wasn’t on the agenda. So after our inquiries she amended the form and put the correct information in there…but it was almost 3 years after the fact.”

Speaking on WGCU’s Gulf Coast Live – Morris also said Boca Raton Democrat Robert Wexler was among a number of Florida lawmakers whose names turned up in the report. He took the 2nd most expensive trip when he traveled to Kazakhstan at a cost of just under 30-thousand-dollars.